Moving the Chain Spotlight #51: Taylor Gerring

Profile

This is a “Moving the Chain Spotlight” that is long overdue. In this edition, we will feature none other than the founder of both Blockchain WTF and the Blockchain Institute, Taylor Gerring.

Gerring grew up in Stuart, Florida; a city on the state’s west coast, with a population of around 16,000 residents. In 2003, he decided to attend the University of Central Florida – home of the defending college football national champions – where he earned BSBA in Management Information Systems (MIS).

From there, he deployed and managed a variety of systems for large enterprise environments. During this period, in 2008 to be exact, he relocated to Chicago, Illinois where he worked as a Senior Software Engineer.

While on sabbatical in 2012, Gerring re-discovered Bitcoin and in the process, fell in love with blockchain tech. He soon decided to work full-time in the blockchain industry.

One of his early gigs was serving as the VP of Engineering for Hive – a cryptocurrency wallet. During his time with Hive, he did things like develop platform-agnostic integrated Bitcoin web applications and manage security & cloud infrastructure.

While attending a blockchain-related event in Milan, Italy, Gerring began to hear about a writer for Bitcoin Magazine named Viatlik Buterin – who had some big plans. An associate put the two in touch, and from there Gerring would soon become a part of the Ethereum Project.

The Florida native would go on to work for Ethereum for roughly three years, between 2013-2016. Among Gerring’s highlights, while collaborating with Buterin and company, include guiding the development team through planning, execution, and maintenance of web properties. He developed strategic direction and managed changes to the network and server infrastructure for the entire organization.

Gerring is also the man who helped found the Ethereum Foundation – an organization dedicated to both promoting and educating people about the Ethereum platform.

These days, the foundation founder continues to promote blockchain education through his website Blockchain WTF and the Chicago-based Blockchain Institute.

As someone who helped develop one of the world’s most popular blockchains –and is also working tirelessly to promote blockchain education – Taylor Gerring is most definitely “Moving the Chain.”

Quotable

“I think that Ethereum is definitely more than a technology. We see Ethereum is also a community. I’m also beginning to think that Ethereum is a philosophy about how to use technology, to build better bridges between humans, to coordinate better amongst ourselves. At the end of the day, blockchain allows for coordination amongst parties who maybe aren’t in front of each other.

This is something that as humans we’ve relied on for a long time, being able to speak to someone face to face. But in a new digital age, this is not always the case. We do commerce online all the time, and we don’t actually see these people. We can’t shake their hands. This is something hard for us to cope with. So I think that Ethereum represents a new way of using technology to improve relationships between people, using digital systems that we can rely on that don’t go down, that are encouraging of free speech and open access. And these are principles that I think everybody can get behind.”

Fun Fact

If someone was to tell Taylor Gerring that he has his head in the clouds – he probably wouldn’t be offended. That’s because Blockchain WTF’s founder has a pilot’s license and spends a great deal of time in the sky.